


i’m trying not to let these mind games play me

by fortunehasgivenup



Series: prompt fills [2]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fix-It, Light Angst, Post 2x09, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22465195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunehasgivenup/pseuds/fortunehasgivenup
Summary: No matter how hard Beth tries, she can't ignore the little mark on her back.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Series: prompt fills [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608919
Comments: 27
Kudos: 220





	i’m trying not to let these mind games play me

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from packleaderluke: soulmate au where your mark only appears after you've bonded or something like that so they don't even know when they first meet and suddenly after 2x09 or something like that they see it!!

There’s so much going through Beth’s head at the time, she thinks she can be forgiven for missing the little mark on her back. It’s small. Not to mention, it blends in with the bruises she gets after Rio fucks her in the bar washroom. 

Then all of a sudden things are going to hell all over again, so she doesn’t even wonder why that little patch isn’t fading with the other bruises, but is instead turning a slightly mottled pink. It falls to the side with everything else that she just can’t deal with right now.

(So what if she can feel it sometimes like it’s steadily burning through her skin. So what if Rio’s watching her a little more sharply now. It’s not like it _means_ anything.)

The day she brings him home to what was once her marriage bed, it becomes a whole lot harder to ignore. Because if it burned before, Rio’s hands sear it even deeper into her, touching it with his fingers and his mouth, his breath stuttering when he traces the edges of it with his thumb. 

Beth very pointedly ignores the matching mark on Rio’s back. She doesn’t think that she can handle it. And how cruel would it be to touch it and deepen their connection when she needs him to leave afterwards.

“Elizabeth,” he nearly growls when she kicks him out, reaching out towards her back like he’s going to set his hand on that spot to prove a point, but Beth pulls away.

“You need to go,” she says.

He scoffs. “So you’re just going to ignore it?”

Beth whirls to glare at him. “It means nothing.”

She leaves to go into the bathroom to scrub him off her skin, but she can’t. He’s under her skin now, a little tear shaped sign that looks almost like a birth mark. 

But she wasn’t born with it.

There have been times over the years, when she thought that the spot where the mark is now was aching. Like it was waiting to make itself known. She feels almost vindicated in that belief now. She hadn’t been imagining it.

Only for it to come too late and at the hands of someone so very, very wrong for her. (Very, very right, a quiet part of her mind whispers.)

————————

Soulmarks are complicated. There’s basically an entire genre of movies and books dedicated to how complicated they can make things, most of which are about the happy complications - one night stands that turn into a whole lot more, that kind of thing. The less happy ones come when someone thinks that the marks mean ownership. There’s movies about those too, that Beth hates seeing. She doesn’t like those stories, the ones about possession and anger.

She accepted a long time ago that she didn’t have a soulmate. Her parents weren’t soulmates. Dean’s parents weren’t. (Although looking at those relationships, maybe she should have been concerned.) Ruby and Stan were though. It had been Beth that Ruby called frantically the morning after she had sex with Stan the first time. Beth had driven to her friend’s house and inspected the mark on the back of her calf. 

“Looks real to me,” she had said as she stood up, washcloth clutched in her hand and dripping water. It hadn’t come off with scrubbing. She’d tossed it into the sink before pulling Ruby into a hug. “I’m so happy for you,” she had told her, meaning it. She still means it. Seeing Stan and Ruby happy makes Beth feel content, like maybe something in the world is going right.

She can’t bring herself to call Ruby. Not now. She has to get the house ready for the kids to come home. Beth feels like she should be more excited, even relieved. Instead, she just feels sick.

The idea that people are less than whole until they meet their soulmate has always made Beth angry. It just seems so…ridiculous. She has never been a partial person, no matter what Dean had tried to turn her into. She has not lived her life in search of completion. 

So she hates it that being with Rio had made her feel like something even more. Hates that sending him away had felt like the drop she’d experienced on the one roller coaster she had ever gone on, like she had tumbled headlong into nothing, leaving too much of herself at the peak.

Her kids are back and Beth loves them more than she can put into words. But as she walks around kissing them goodnight, there’s a feeling that it’s not enough.

It makes Beth afraid.

——————————

“I need to show you something.”

Ruby looks her in the eye. “You’re going to need to give me more than that because no way am I getting drawn into another one of your schemes. We just got Stan out of jail.”

“I need you to look at a - at something on my skin,” Beth hedges.

Ruby’s expression instantly turns worried. “Is it a funky mole? Because I’m not a doctor.”

Beth turns around and pulls up her shirt until she knows it’s above the mark. She practically feels Ruby sucking in a breath. “Is that a -“

“Is it?” Beth asks.

“How long has it been there? Who -“ Ruby stops. “No. No way. Him?” Her voice goes a little high pitched on the question.

Beth nods, jumping slightly when Ruby reaches out to touch the mark.

“Sensitive, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Beth sighs. “Is yours like that?”

Ruby’s fingers probe the edge of the mark. “If I go a while without Stan touching it, yeah. It’s like he soothes it, you know?”

“Not really,” Beth mutters. After a moment, she tells Ruby a bit more. “When Dean took the kids, I - I invited Rio back to the house. We had sex again. He - we -“ she stumbles over her words. “I made him leave after.”

“Oh B,” Ruby stops touching the mark and tugs Beth’s shirt down, “and he just went?”

“I didn’t give him much of a choice,” Beth admits, turning around to meet Ruby’s understanding eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

“He know why you sent him away?” Ruby asks, nudging Beth towards the couch. Beth shakes her head. “Then tell him. Explain what was going on. He’s…” Ruby trails off. “He’s Rio. He’s Gangfriend. He always knows what to do, right?”

——————————

“What, you talking to me now?” Rio doesn’t even glare at her. He just looks disinterested, like he barely even sees her and it _hurts_. 

“It was a condition of him bringing the kids back,” Beth says. Rio’s eyes sharpen, focusing on her and her alone. Beth sits down next to him on the bench. “It was you or them and there is no scenario in this world where I don’t pick them. Not even for this.”

“He gave you that condition?” Rio tilts his head to the side. “What were his words, exactly?”

Beth tells him everything. Dean’s anger towards Rio. The whole story about the hitmen. Rio just sits there on the park bench, listening to it all while he still keeps his eye on his son. Beth doesn’t know his name. That hits her when she sees Rio’s lips twitch at the boy’s antics, flipping upside-down on the equipment. She has a soulmate and she doesn’t even know his son’s name. Doesn’t know if the name she calls him is his real one.

“I’ll take care of it,” Rio says, like it’s simple. Like Beth hasn’t spent weeks trying to figure it out.

“How?”

Rio bites his lip, leans forward, then pushes himself upright. Beth stands too. She hates it when he looms, but it’s even worse when she’s sitting. Like she’s just been called into the principal’s office and is about to get questioned about whether or not everything’s okay at home.

She must stand too fast, because she sways a little. Without saying anything, Rio puts out his hand and steadies her. His hand is pressed right over the mark and even through two thick layers of clothing, she can feel his touch.

“You trust me?” he asks.

Beth considers the question. “Should I?”

He laughs. “With this?” He presses his hand tighter to her body. He means them, their connection, everything that the mark symbolizes. “Yeah.”

Beth gnaws on her bottom lip. “I don’t want to do that again.” Rio looks confused by her statement. “Letting someone just _take care_ of me and not knowing what’s going on. I can’t.”

Rio studies her, then nods. “You said he’s broke.”

Beth jerks her chin up.

“I ain’t,” Rio replies. “So we’re going to hand this to the best divorce lawyer in the state and let her go to town. You think there’s a single judge who will grant him custody once you show a pattern of reckless behaviour? The affairs? Any of that?” He shakes his head, then brings his hand up to brush the underside of her chin with a small smile. “Nah.”

“The money -“

“He says shit about that,” Rio interrupts, “he goes down too.”

“What about you? He’ll try to say something about me associating with a criminal.”

Rio laughs. “Yeah, well the only reason I’ve got that record is thanks to you.” He sounds almost fond as he says it. “Besides, we got a card he can’t beat.” The hand on her back pulls her flush against him and he digs his fingers in slightly.

The mark. The proof that the two of them are soulmate, that shows they’re meant for one another. Something that Dean doesn’t know about. Something that will discount anything that Dean says. 

After all, the bond between soulmates doesn’t discriminate. Who cares what Rio does? Who cares about the type of person that Beth is expected to be? They’re _meant to be_ , their connection preordained by some cosmic power that etched their connection into their bodies long before they even met each other.

Beth swallows and gives herself permission to hope. 

To push herself up on her toes. 

To press her lips to Rio’s chin and then to his mouth when he tilts his face downwards so that she can reach. 

To laugh when she lowers herself down again.

“What’s your son’s name?” she asks. “Fuck, what’s _your_ name?”

Rio’s eyes light up as he grins. “Kiss me again and maybe I’ll tell you.”

Beth pulls his head down this time and that part of her that had been raging at their separation, the one that she caused, settles. 

Perhaps it wasn’t that she hadn’t been whole before, but simply that she had wanted someone to complement her. A mirror image. Someone to understand her fear and her anger, who softened their edges without diminishing her.

She had wanted Rio even before she knew that he existed. Before she had seen him and touched him and felt him. Now, knowing even just a small piece of him, she wants more.

And if the way he’s kissing her back tells her anything, it’s that he feels the same.

They break apart, aware of where they are and who’s around them.

Beth meets his eyes and licks her lips.

“I trust you.”

**Author's Note:**

> In an attempt to make myself write things that aren't always 10k+, I'm taking prompts on tumblr (or on here if you prefer). They will all be unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine and I'll be uploading them as a series rather than chapters because seeing that 1/? is stressful. I'm still working on all my other stuff as well, so most of those should be updating soon. As always, if there's something you think should be warned for, please let me know.
> 
> Title from Love Me by Felix Cartal & Lights.


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